3 stars out of 5: This book is written with a technical skill and what seems like immense sincerity, but it also seems to lack any depth or understanding of depression, or the kind of problems that actually ruin people’s lives. After finishing this book, one hopes that the author actually intended it as satire, even if the emotional intensity of “The Zeroes” indicates it is entirely serious. Ultimately, it is a disappointing and depressing book because it is so earnest about suffering it misunderstands and misrepresents at every turn. Though well-written in some ways, the thematic crux of the book is not only absurd in the incredible privilege it takes for granted, but actually intensely insulting in the amount of cynicism it appropriates but never deserves.
“The Zeroes” is Patrick Roesle’s novel that follows a group of recent high-school graduates who are determined to make it as professional artists and musicians. The story covers the brief and early successes of an anonymous narrator and his best friend guitarist, Charlie, as they struggle to fulfill their artistic passion in the first decade of the new millennium. The plot is grounded primarily in character instead of action, and it is handled in a somewhat non-linear fashion that adds to the author’s brilliantly engaging and authentic sense of voice.
In a lot of ways, “The Zeroes” is a strange book to try to review, because the writing is very polished (from a prose perspective, not necessarily an editorial one as there are still a handful of typos and missing words) and the characterizations are intensely insightful throughout the book. Some of the observations of the narrator are stunningly perceptive, and the narration itself is compelling enough to carry the story which revolves around some intensely mundane events. There’s also a great deal of cultural background, from songs and television shows to arcade games, thrown into the mix which gives the whole book a very real texture. From a technical perspective, the book is very well written.
But it is also incredibly depressing. It’s so depressing that it actually starts to sound a little melodramatic. “The Zeroes” takes on an edge of undeserving cynicism largely because the central conflict of the book revolves around working at a mall instead of becoming Stan Lee or a rock-star with their high school ska band. I’ll grant that working at a mall is frustrating and boring. But having worked at a mall in the past I can confidently say it isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a person. None of the characters seem to have a conflict greater than feeling that an entry level job is somehow beneath them, which is not only incredibly naïve, but is also incredibly condescending and insulting to a lot of people with honest jobs. Additionally, the characters who feel the most degraded by working at a mall are also still living with and mostly supported by their parents, which is really sort of ridiculous for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that there are a lot of people in the world who were never supported by their parents to begin with and couldn’t rely on them for help while they were in high school, much less after they graduated.
There are a couple other things that seem pretty upside down to me. Like the character who ends up killing himself because none of his friends came to his rock show being given a great deal more pity by the narrator than the unpopular weirdo returning from his tour of duty in Iraq. The writer of this book also throws in a great many references to the Beat Generation and includes a whole host of quotes from Allen Ginsberg as though he intends to imply that working a job in a mall while still being mostly supported by your parents is equivalent to being homosexual during McCarthyism, or being a Depression-Era farmer, which is what the ‘beat generation’ initially referenced.
Perhaps the worst part of this book is the fact that every character seems to see this kind of undeserved self-pitying depression as entirely warranted as though not immediately succeeding at an artistic endeavor is a crime against their very humanity, and that only the dumb, untalented masses deserve to work a day job. The worst part of this book is how entirely sincere it is in the belief that no one has suffered greater injustice than high-school graduates who think themselves too brilliant to fail or suffer, as though jazz musicians were always regarded as legends, instead of how they were actually regarded in their day: as second-class in the best case and sub-human in the worst. The worst part of “The Zeroes” is that it isn’t a dumb book. It’s a smart book with an enormous blind spot that seems like it should have been so patently obvious to the writer that one almost wants to reread this book as a satire too subtle in its critique of extended adolescence.
3 stars out of 5: This book is written with a technical skill and what seems like immense sincerity, but it also seems to lack any depth or understanding of depression, or the kind of problems that actually ruin people’s lives. After finishing this book, one hopes that the author actually intended it as satire, even if the emotional intensity of “The Zeroes” indicates it is entirely serious. Ultimately, it is a disappointing and depressing book because it is so earnest about suffering it misunderstands and misrepresents at every turn. Though well-written in some ways, the thematic crux of the book is not only absurd in the incredible privilege it takes for granted, but actually intensely insulting in the amount of cynicism it appropriates but never deserves.
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